March 6-21, 1998.  The end of a memorable basketball season. (#166)

My sixteen-year-old brother Mark got all the athletic talent in the Dennison family, playing baseball and basketball for pretty much his entire life up to now.  I played tee-ball for one year, when I was six, and I remembered very little about it, except that I thought it was dumb that we did not keep score.  I also had a brief high school football career that lasted one day.  I worked out with the football team the summer after ninth grade, because a lot of people encouraged me to play football because of my large build, and I saw football players as the cool kids who got all the girls.  I also took time that summer to learn more about football.  I read books about football rules, strategies, plays, and the history of football.  I quit after the first full day of practice, because I was so out of shape, but that experience of learning about the game gave me a greater appreciation for watching football.

Since I was tall, almost six feet four inches, many well-intentioned but ill-informed people told me that I would make a good basketball player.  I was not fast, I was not coordinated, and I was not disciplined enough to be in good shape.  But even with no experience as a player, I watched University of Jeromeville Colts football and basketball games frequently during my time as a student there.  These were the most popular collegiate sports in the United States.  UJ did not play at the highest level of competition, and few UJ Colts went on to play professionally, but the players were good enough to make the games fun to watch.  A student-run cheering section called the Colt Crew created a lively, energetic environment full of loud chants and cheers, silly skits, and free prizes tossed into the crowd.

The UJ football team had consistently won more games than they lost each season for well over a decade now.  They made the national playoffs for their division of play in two of the four years that I had been there, advancing to the semifinals in the most recent season.  The basketball team had also been winning in recent years, but this year, the team was having one of their best seasons in school history.  They were undefeated against conference opponents, only losing two games all year early in the season.

That record earned UJ the right to host a regional tournament in Jeromeville.  The playoff schedule had them playing back-to-back nights, Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7.  That was the week of Fake Spring, the brief spell of unseasonably pleasant days that typically appeared that time of year, followed by another storm or period of cloudy weather.  On that Friday, the day after my final long conversation with Sadie Rowland, I decided to eat the lunch I had packed outside.  As I walked around the Quad, looking for a place to sit, I noticed a commotion forming around a guy holding a large sign, about three feet high, on a pole above him.  He periodically blew a whistle and pointed and yelled at someone.  I knew what was going on here; I approached the mob closely enough to observe, but far enough to not get involved.

About once a year, I would see a shouting man like this show up on the Quad, physically brandishing a Bible and pointing at it, but never actually opening or reading it.  I did not know if this was the same guy I had seen before, nor did I know if all of these people were part of the same organized group.  The large sign he held said:

LIARS, HYPOCRITES, SLUGGARDS, DRUNKS, STONERS, FORNICATORS, PERVERTS, EVOLUTIONISTS, CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND MORMONS… REPENT! OR BURN IN HELL!

“If God gave us pot, why can’t we smoke it?” one random person from the crowd screamed.  The shouting Bible man pointed at the student asking the question and blew a whistle loudly, then began ranting about temptations from the Devil.

This pattern continued as I ate my lunch, with students saying things to get a reaction from this man, and the man blowing his whistle and shouting things that sounded somewhat Biblical in nature but were certainly not spoken with Godly love.  No one in this crowd was actually interested in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  The students asking the man questions just wanted to make fun of him; they were not curious about Christianity.  And the man with the answers did not want to meet these students where they were and show them God’s love through the way he lived his life.  He just wanted to yell at people and get attention.  People like this give real Christians a bad name in the eyes of students like these.

After watching this for half an hour or so, I noticed out of the corner of my eye two more people approaching, also holding large signs like the one the shouting man had.  At first I wondered if the shouting man had sidekicks, but as one of the signs came into clear view, I could see that it was different from the shouting man’s sign.  It was hastily made of cardboard and duct tape, not painted on wood.  The sign said:

GOD WANTS YOU TO WATCH COLT BASKETBALL
7PM REC PAVILION
WEAR YOUR COLT CREW SHIRT

I laughed out loud when I realized what had happened.  The Colt Crew had seen the angry Bible man with his sign, and they made their own signs to stir up school spirit for the basketball playoffs.  The Colt Crew students mingled among the mob of students surrounding the shouting Bible man, and students from the mob cheered when they saw the Colt Crew signs.

About five minutes later, I was done with lunch.  I got up and walked past one of the Colt Crew sign holders, and told him, “Great sign.  That’s brilliant.”

“Thanks,” he replied.  “Are you coming to the game tonight?”

“I can’t make it tonight.  But if we win, I’ll definitely be at tomorrow’s game.”

“We’ll win.  Think positive.”

“Yeah.”

Jeromeville Christian Fellowship met that night, so I could not make it to the basketball game.  People at JCF do not blow whistles and shout judgmental slogans; if they did, I probably would not have learned through them two years earlier what it really meant to follow Jesus.

UJ won their game that Friday, so they played again on Saturday, against Northwest Methodist University from Washington state.  I did not go with anyone to the game; I just showed up that night, since I had no other plans.

As much as I hated to do so, I paid the three dollars to park in the lot next to the Recreation Pavilion.  I thought about riding my bike to the game, it had been a nice day, but by the time I left, the sun was setting, the temperature had cooled down, and it would be cold and dark for the bike ride back home.  Also, I needed to get batteries for my bike headlight.

As I approached the building, I noticed that there was no Colt Crew line for students; instead, a sign said that students must purchase a ticket.  I remembered reading in the Daily Colt that, because this was a playoff game, the ticket office was required to sell tickets at prices set by the league administrators.  Normally students could watch all home athletic events free, but that did not apply for playoff games.  I overheard some students standing in line who were upset and surprised about this; apparently they did not read the Daily Colt every day like I did.

The Recreation Pavilion had an expandable upper level.  Areas normally used for things like student weightlifting classes and gymnastics team practice were cleared out to add another level of retractable bleachers for certain events, such as basketball games expected to draw large crowds and graduation ceremonies.  The Colt Crew student section was in the same place as usual, but tickets had to be sold at the general admission price.  I sat in the Colt Crew section and looked around me; I did not know any of these people, but I said hi to them anyway.  One guy said hi back.  I could tell right away that this would be no ordinary game as crowds walked in and filled the seats on all levels.

The students who led the cheers and skits for the Colt Crew, one of whom was the guy whose sign I complimented yesterday, led us in booing the Northwest Methodist team as they took the court for warmups.  The Colts ran out onto the court a few minutes later, and the entire Colt Crew section, along with the rest of the Pavilion, cheered loudly.  I saw five guys who looked like fraternity brothers in the section next to me who had taken off their shirts, revealing painted chests spelling out C-O-L-T-S in the school colors of navy blue and gold, but they were standing out of order, so their chests said CLOTS.  I laughed.

The Eagles of Northwest Methodist University were one of the only two teams to beat Jeromeville in the regular season.  That was back in December, in a non-conference game, and I did not remember this until I read it in the Daily Colt earlier this week.  Despite that early setback, though, the Colts had a much better overall record for the season, 26 wins to the Eagles’ 17.  That storyline alone made this game interesting, especially since the winner would advance to the national tournament with the winners of seven other regional tournaments like this one, and the loser’s season would be over.

For much of the first half, the game was close.  Neither team was able to stay very far ahead.  It seemed like one team would score, and then the other would score right away, and if one team missed, the other team would usually miss also.  Eight minutes before halftime, the game stopped for a media timeout, to run commercials on the radio broadcast.  The Colt Crew announcer shouted, “It’s time for Tube Sock Madness!” He and the other students leading the Colt Crew cheers began throwing rolled-up tube socks into the crowd.  I was still not clear on how this tradition began, but it was always fun to try to catch them, even though I had yet to wear the one pair I had caught in the past, at a football game freshman year.

When play started again, the Colts were a few points behind, but they proceeded to go on a tear, scoring ten unanswered points and blocking NWMU’s shot attempts.  I was not sure if this was because of what the coach told them during the timeout, or the excitement generated by the crowd during Tube Sock Madness, or something else, but I liked it.  The crowd did too, becoming more lively every time the Colts scored or made a big defensive move.  Jeremy Fox of the Colts made a three-point shot late in the half.  As was usually the case, everyone in the Colt Crew stuck both hands in the air as the ball was in the air, and we all put our hands down and said “Whoosh!” as the ball sailed through the net.

I turned to the guy next to me, the one who had said hi when I arrived in my seat.  “YEAAAH!!!” I shouted, raising my hand to give a high five.  He shouted back and high-fived back.  While I was turned, I noticed that the CLOTS guys had rearranged themselves into the correct spelling of COLTS.

The Colts now led by nine with a minute to go until halftime, and after a few more scores on each side, the Colts led 38-31 at halftime.  During halftime, the marching band played a few songs, and the Colt Crew students, after a costume change, did a silly lip-synching skit that involved girls dressed as the high-voiced young boys from the band Hanson, and guys dressed as the Spice Girls.  I laughed.

The Colts were even more dominant in the second half than they were in the first.  Jeremy Fox’s three-point shooting heated up in the second half; he made another four successful three-point shots, in addition to a number of two-point shots.  Jeremy Fox finished the game with twenty-six points, and the Colts won by a score of 82-58.  Cheers erupted from all over the Pavilion, especially from the Colt Crew section.

The Colts had beaten a team that had beaten them earlier in the season in order to advance to the national championship for this division, with seven other teams.  Three more wins, and we would be national champions.  I extended both arms and gave a high ten to the guy sitting next to me, and we continued shouting cheers as we followed the rest of the crowd outside.  Sports victories have a way of bringing strangers together. 

The national tournament, held over two thousand miles away in Louisville, did not begin until a week and a half after the eight regional tournaments.  This led to the odd situation that the Jeromeville Colts players had games during the week that they should have been taking finals.  Most of the schools competing were on a semester schedule, with no such thing as winter quarter finals in March, so this issue did not affect most of the tournament participants. I was not sure how or when these players would take their final exams, but I imagined that exceptions could be made in this extraordinary circumstance. 

I tried to arrange my study breaks so that I could listen to the games on the radio while I was not studying, or while I was doing things that did not require intense concentration, like practicing math problems.  UJ won the first two games of the tournament decisively, setting up a showdown with the Lions of Central Kentucky Christian College.  CKCC was a six-time champion who also had only lost two games all year. Also, the school was located less than a hundred miles from Louisville, so there would be many more Lions fans in the crowd, a possible disadvantage for the Colts.

The final game was on national television, on Saturday morning right after my finals week ended.  The schools that played in the top level of competition of college basketball had games on television often, but this one championship game was the only nationally televised game for this division. It was the first time in history that a UJ Colts sporting event was on national television.  The game began at 1:00 in Louisville, which was 10:00 in the morning in Jeromeville’s time zone.  Yesterday was the last day of finals, and tomorrow after church I would head to my parents’ house in Plumdale for a few days.

“Hey,” said my roommate Sean, emerging from the shower during the pre-game show.  “Is this the Colts basketball championship?”

“Yeah!” I said.  Sean sat on the couch next to me to watch the game.

The announcers told the story of the Jeromeville Colts, how they breezed through the season and the regional tournament with only two losses, qualifying for the national tournament for the first time.  Then they pointed out that Central Kentucky Christian was a perennial champion in their conference and, although none of the current players had won a championship, the coach and program in general were no strangers to winning.  The Colts certainly had an uphill climb ahead of them.

“It’s kind of weird to see Jeromeville on TV,” Sean said.

“I know.”

The game was close for most of the first half, much like the game I went to against Northwest Methodist.  My ears always perked up when I heard the national broadcasters talking about Jeromeville.  The University of Jeromeville was not very well known beyond the far western states, and I liked hearing what outsiders had to say about my school.

“Jeromeville is in between Capital City and Bay City,” they said.  Technically true, although it was so much closer to Capital City that this seemed like a misleading description.  “The University of Jeromeville has been a football power in recent years, and it is also known as an academic powerhouse.”  Very true; I felt like part of that academic culture.  “This game really is a contrast between two different kinds of universities, with UJ being a large public school, and CKCC being a small private liberal arts college.”  I had never been to CKCC, but that sounds right.  “Jeromeville is on a quarter schedule, so these students had to take their winter quarter finals from the hotel room here in Louisville earlier this week.  They brought a proctor on the trip with them.”  That answered one of my questions.

UJ made a strong showing in the first half and led 42-35 at halftime.  But, although CKCC’s last championship was eight years earlier, many of their players had played in high-stakes playoff games before.  They used this experience to fight back, taking a one-point lead with a little over a minute left in the game.

“I don’t like this,” I said, my teeth slightly clenched as I looked at the television.

“I know,” Sean replied.

A player from CKCC missed a shot.  Jason Simmons rebounded the ball for the Colts and passed it to Jeremy Fox.  Fox dribbled up to the three-point line and shot; the ball swished through the hoop.  Three points for the Colts, who now led 76-74 with 37 seconds left.

“YESSS!!!!!” I shouted, jumping up and motioning to give Sean a high-five, even though he was still sitting on the couch.  Sean raised his hand and slapped mine.

I then sat nervously to watch what CKCC would do on their possession.  They passed the ball around, trying to get away from Jeromeville’s pressure defense.  The Lions’ tall center, who was so far had led all players in scoring, took a shot from somewhere near the free throw line, unable to get the ball any closer because of Jeromeville’s defense.  He missed, and the rebound shot out directly to Jeremy Fox.  I breathed deeply, finally feeling better about the outcome of this game.  Twenty-eight seconds remained on the clock, a shorter time than the 35-second shot clock, meaning that the Colts could theoretically hold on to the ball and run out the clock. The only way the Lions could get the ball back was by intentionally fouling the player with the ball and forcing him to shoot free throws.   A Lion player did just that, intentionally fouling Fox, but Fox made both free throws, giving Jeromeville a four-point lead.  CKCC missed a shot on their next possession, and then intentionally fouled once more.  After Jason Simmons made his two free throws, CKCC missed a desperation shot as time expired.  Jeromeville had won, by a score of 80 to 74.

“WOOOOOO!!!” I shouted, standing up and attempting again to high-five Sean, who stayed on the couch despite also being visibly excited.  It was more like a medium-five.

The banner proclaiming UJ national champions of their division still hangs in the rafters of the Recreation Pavilion to this day.  Jeromeville moved to the top division in 2008, and since then, UJ has made that division’s national tournament only once.  They were promptly eliminated by one of the major basketball powerhouses, to the surprise of exactly no one.

One major change happened on campus after the national championship that lasted for a while.  When the athletics department had to send information to the national media, they realized that the campus sports teams did not use a consistent logo.  The official logo, appearing occasionally around campus but not on any jerseys or uniforms, was a letter “A” with a horse’s head on one side and ears of wheat on the other.  The A stood for Agriculture, presumably; the university had originally been the College of Agriculture affiliated with the University of the Bay, sixty miles away.  This was the logo that appeared on the television broadcast, and it seemed strange and confusing as the logo of a large, modern university with a sports program.

After the television broadcast used that logo, the UJ administration hired a professional design firm to make with a new logo, and soon, the university had a much better-looking head of a colt to use as their logo.  I bought numerous t-shirts and hats with that logo on it.  But then, for no apparent reason, in 2019 the Colts reverted to an updated version of the old “A” logo.  I never understood this, since neither “Jeromeville” nor “Colts” started with A.  I recognized the value of connecting to campus history and traditions, but I still preferred the colt head logo.  UJ is not well-known enough nationally to be recognized by a logo with a different letter on it.  But I supposed that, if I were to wear something with this confusing “A” logo on it, it could become a conversation starter if someone asked me what the logo meant.

---

Readers: What is your best memory of watching sports? Tell me about it in the comments.

Disclaimer: Northwest Methodist University and Central Kentucky Christian College are, like the University of Jeromeville, fictional.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

---